


seven masks

by hexicity



Series: seven masks [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Multi, Team as Family, Violence, elemental powers, slowburn, superhero au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-16 01:54:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14154132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexicity/pseuds/hexicity
Summary: “Well see,” Magnus looks back up with a serene expression as his hands continue to work on their own, “if we have to be this way—like if we have to have superpowers and take down an evil psychopath—we might as well look good.”“Capes.” Simon suggests promptly.“We can’tfly.”





	1. Chapter 1

It starts with a gun and a bag of gummy worms. 

The gummy worms are in Simon’s hands. He’s crinkling the bag absentmindedly while Clary crouches to examine the bottom row of chips. There’s only one bag of Fritos left, so she feels like the universe is trying to signal that she’s destined to eat the Fritos. But she’s _really_ in the mood for Cheetos. 

“You’re more concentrated on which chips to buy than you were on studying for chemistry last night.” Simon observes with a scoff. He’s not wrong. 

“Not everyone can make such decisive decisions.” Clary says as he pulls her to her feet. She flicks his usual bag of gummy worms, identical to every other black bag that he’s bought for the past four months consecutively. “You ready?”

Simon looks over her shoulder, biting down on his lip and tightening his grip on the bag. “If I give you the money, can you buy it for me?”

“You’re ridiculous.” She sighs. Clary grabs a fistful of Simon’s sweatshirt and begins tugging him down the aisle, which he allows merely to avoid making a scene in front of the very person he’s hoping to avoid. “Alec Lightwood is not going to hurt you. Especially not when you contribute to his family’s store every single day.”

“He scares the shit out of me.” 

There’s three possible check-out people at the ShortStop Convenience Store. There’s Isabelle, by far the best option in Clary’s opinion, who always makes pleasant conversation and has long dark hair that curls at the tips. There’s Jace, a pretty decent option on most days because he and Simon engage in fairly amusing banter on sight due to their completely fabricated rivalry. And then there’s Alec, who seldom smiles and offers few words aside from telling them the price and asking if they want their receipt. 

“I saw him smile at school on Tuesday.” Clary says, keeping her voice low as they draw closer to the front counter. 

“Impossible.”

“I’m serious. He’s a normal person, Simon, you just don’t know him very well.”

Alec looks up at them finally, his face entirely expressionless. It doesn’t exactly help her case. Clary takes the gummy worms from Simon when it becomes clear that he refuses to get close to the counter, as if Alec will break his arm the moment he lays the bag down. 

Alec doesn’t offer any niceties. There’s no asking if they found everything okay or how their day was, but Clary isn’t bothered by it. Well, she’s not bothered by not having to make small talk. She’s a _little_ bothered by the fact that her summer job at the movie theater requires constant, forced politeness in order to simply earn her minimum wage while Alec Lightwood stands behind a counter skimming through his phone as he earns a good amount of money from his already-wealthy family’s business. 

But that’s just the way things are, Clary knows, and she gives him a cheerful smile anyways. 

She’s thinking of something to say when her phone buzzes in the front pocket of her hoodie. Dropping her eyes from where Alec is silently refilling the receipt paper, Clary grabs her phone and scrolls through the notifications, past Magnus’ paragraph-long rants about his government project and right to Luke’s most recent and properly punctuated text. 

“Luke isn’t gonna be home tonight.” She relays to Simon, who peers at the screen over her shoulder. “More policing to be done, I guess.”

“That’s like the fourth night in a row.” Simon sighs. “When are we going to watch Top Chef? I swear I’m gonna get spoiled if we don’t watch it soon—“

“Who’s going to spoil _Top Chef_ for you?” Clary asks, but she gets his point. She’s tired of Luke and Jocelyn’s constant absence, too, and she knows that Simon complaining about missing primetime reality television is really just code for him missing his two pseudo-parents. 

“My social media is rich with fellow food connoisseurs, I’ll have you know.” Simon responds without missing a beat. The door jingles as someone new enters, and something in the back of Clary’s mind remarks that this is odd, because the store is usually dead this time of day. She ignores the oddity in favor of mocking Simon. 

“Do food connoisseurs usually eat fake worms coated in sugar and—“

“Hands up.”

The two words, croaked from the recesses of a voice that sounds as if it hasn’t been used in decades make Clary, Simon, and Alec all flinch in synch. Clary and Simon turn to see a man standing in the doorway, a gun in his hands and a grimace on his freckled face. Something in Clary isn’t immediately scared like she should be, maybe because the guy looks no older than Alec. But Simon is scared, she can tell, because he’s got one hand in the air while the other yanks on Clary’s arm so she’ll do the same. 

And Alec—Alec is stepping in front of them. Stoic and silent as always, but now he’s standing between them and the armed man (boy?) with his arms out to the side. 

“Take the money.” Alec says calmly. “The register is open. Just walk back there and take it.”

The man does so, while Alec carefully moves to his new position between Simon and Clary and the counter. He looks resigned and the slightest bit upset, though Clary doubts this will even put a dent into the Lightwood salary. 

Simon is clutching Clary’s hand. She squeezes back, wondering why she isn’t shaking like Simon or at least nervously restless like Alec. The thing is, Clary is the daughter of two cops. She knows how common convenience store robberies are, how prepared every employee probably is to hand over the daily till. And there’s just something about the whole situation, how easy it was for this guy, that seems off. She’s just not afraid for some reason. Maybe because—

“That’s not a real gun.” 

Simon is holding her hand so tight that she can feel his nails leaving half-moon indents in her skin. Alec is giving her a murderous glare over his shoulder, a mixture of disbelief and exasperation. But she knows she’s right, because she’s seen and held and studied guns her whole life. They don’t look as misshapen and bulky and just _off_ as the one clutched in the robber’s hand does. 

“Shut your mouth.” The boy spits, his hands still working in a quick blur to pile the money into his bag. 

“Hey.” Clary attempts to move out from behind Alec’s protective shield, but he’s unrelenting in his resolve to stay put, the murder in his eyes only growing the longer she attempts to push away his arm. Finally, she settles for just giving the robber a cross glare. “Nice try, dude, but I know what a gun looks like. That’s not a real gun.”

The robber’s eyes fall to the weapon, which trembles just perceptibly in his hand. He looks back up at them, both indignant and fearful. “It’s dangerous.”

“Honestly, it looks plastic.” She argues. “Did you buy it from the toy store?”

“For the love of God, Fray, shut up.” Alec pleads under his breath, and Clary is momentarily taken aback by the fact that he knows her last name. She’s looking at him, the way his eyes are trained on the robber. She sees the fear dilute his pupils suddenly, and turning back to the robber Clary realizes that the gun is now aimed at Alec. 

“Still think it isn’t real?” The guy asks, lips pulled up into a cocky smirk. A shred of doubt inches into the forefront of her mind, but Clary is waist deep in her plan, so she prays a silent prayer and says, 

“Yup.” 

When the gun fires, it isn’t the noise a gun should make. It isn’t a pop, not the kind of noise that she’s heard on television shows or the singular time Luke took her to the farm and let her shoot one of his old pistols. It’s almost like a crunching noise. 

But something hits Alec all the same, and he drops with a pained cry. 

Clary briefly glances back to see Simon instinctively supporting Alec, a million curse words flying out as he tries to pry Alec’s hand away from his cheek to see the damage. 

Clary rushes to the door, unsure of what her goal is as the man sprints for the exit. Survival instincts finally force her to stop when he aims the gun behind him and fires three rounds, each one hitting the glass of the door above her when she ducks. 

And then he’s gone, lost amidst the crowd of Brooklyn, full of people staring in wide-eyed alarm. A few adults are already rushing forward, reaching for their phones and looking at her with questioning gazes. Clary ignores these well-meaning people and turns on her heel to re-enter the store. 

“Holy shit.” Simon is saying, now crouched with Alec on the floor. “I mean just, holy shit.”

Clary is about to ask if Alec is okay when he looks up at her. There’s a singular, thin line of blood crawling down his cheek. The source is a tiny, pinky-nail sized scrape. That’s all there is. 

“What kind of bullet did _that_?” Clary breathes, and Alec immediately shakes his head. He reaches up for her hand and pulls it towards his face, forcing her fingers to make contact with skin that’s inexplicably cold right around his cut. 

“A bullet made out of ice.” 

 

Sometimes Clary wishes Luke could just be like every other disappointed parent and yell at her. Honestly, it would make things a hell of a lot easier. 

Right now he’s making pasta. His back is to her as he stands at the stove, sprinkling in different tubes of spices and pinching in different specks of herbs. The white undershirt of his uniform is still on. Clary looks down at where her hands rest in her lap, still marked faintly with the imprints of Simon’s nails. Her palms are sweaty. A man with a gun apparently can’t scare her, but being lectured by Luke can. 

The thing about Luke is he’s silent when he’s angry. He doesn’t yell or slam things or stomp around. One who’s unfamiliar with him probably wouldn’t be able to even see the anger, but Clary knows. It’s a kind of deadly light that settles into his eyes, and it’s been there since he arrived at the convenience store and heard the entire story from Alec. 

Simon abandoned her, of course, because the only time he wants to be away from Luke is when he’s angry. Jocelyn is working, as Luke should be, and Clary firmly decides that that’s a good jumping off point. 

“I uh—“ Her voice falters and she has to try again, “I thought you had to work late tonight.” 

“I did.” Luke says with his back still to her. “But seeing as my kid was almost shot, I was given leeway.”

“I wasn’t—“

He finally turns to face her. His face, usually open and inviting and warm, is hard around the edges. He crosses his arms over his chest, putting a heavy weight in her’s. 

“Clary.” Luke begins. “You did exactly what I told you _never_ to do. You were irrational and impulsive and you made a bargain that, luckily, you won. But if you hadn’t? You could’ve _died_. Alec or Simon could’ve died.”

And she knows this. The feeling of her stomach dropping to her feet when the gun was aimed at Alec Lightwood will never ever leave her, and she wishes with her entire heart that the gun was aimed at her instead. But it wasn’t. 

“I’m sorry.” Is all she can say, in a voice so small that Luke probably doesn’t even hear it. 

“Imagine if you were wrong. Imagine it was just a gun you’ve never seen before. Imagine if a bullet had hit that kid, Clary. It could’ve just been a robbery but you had to complicate things—“

“Luke, I was just trying to help.” She says desperately. “And I know that was stupid but I—I didn’t do this to make things worse.

“That’s the problem!” Luke argues, and his voice is actually raising to a level that Clary rarely hears. He’s no longer leaning against the counter, no longer letting a dish rag hang limply from his shoulder. Now he’s standing firmly in front of her, rag gripped in his hand. “You can’t always be a hero, Clary. Sometimes it’s—it’s just best to stand back and not take that gamble.”

She wants to argue again. What he’s saying to her doesn’t make any sense, really, and she has a million retorts lined up on her tongue, ready to go. But Luke is looking at her with such desperation sunken into his features. There’s an almost pained look in his eyes. So Clary takes a shaky sigh and nods. 

“You’re right.” She concedes. “I’m sorry, Luke.”

He runs a hand over his face, now apparently exhausted. He drops into the chair beside her and pulls her roughly into a hug, squeezing her until she can barely breathe. “You had the right idea, kiddo. Helping that kid, trying to fight off a bully. Just don’t do something stupid.”

The fluttery feeling of discomfort in Clary’s stomach recedes as her and Luke resume the usual routine. They eat pasta together in the comfortable lull of calm conversation. She even gets a few laughs out of him, impressive considering his mood. 

She assumes that missing his shift tonight will lead to a double shift tomorrow, so the question she’s dying to ask will either have to wait for another few days or be pushed out now. Ignoring the lesson she’s been force-fed today, Clary trusts her impulses and blurts out, “What kind of gun fires bullets made of ice?”

Luke blinks at her. He slowly sets down his fork. “Clary, you don’t really believe that the bullet was made out of ice. Do you?”

“Well,” This wasn’t the answer she was entirely expecting, “yeah? You saw Alec’s face, it was just a little cut.”

“So it was a graze.” Luke says with a shrug. 

“But it was in the _middle_ of his cheek.” Clary argues. “And his face was _cold_.”

“You were both in shock. Alec probably didn’t want to acknowledge that he’d just almost been hit by a bullet, so he was trying to lessen it in his mind.” 

“No earlier you _said_ that it wasn’t a bullet.” Clary points out. Luke stops chewing slowly, his eyes meeting her’s with a sense of urgency. 

“No I didn’t.” He says slowly. 

“You did! You said,” Clary lowers her voice to perform her top notch Luke impression, “‘What if that kid had been hit by a bullet?’”

“That’s not how I sound,” Luke replies, pointing his fork at her before going back to his meal, “And I meant, what if he had been _hit_ by a bullet. Not, what if he had been hit by a _bullet_.” 

Clary squints, trying to see more evidence of doubt on Luke’s face. He’s got his head bowed, though, and before she can say anything else he abruptly pushes his seat away from the table and brushes his remaining pasta into the garbage. “I’d love to listen to your conspiracy theories, kiddo, but I’ve got reports to fill. Get your homework done before you call Simon.”

And then he’s gone again, as he has been lately. Clary considers his point, weighs the logic of it. She knows what she felt, though, and despite what Luke says she remembers the feeling of Alec’s skin beneath her fingertips. And she remembers the inflection in Luke’s voice. And, most damning of all, she saw the fear in Luke’s eyes just now. 

Clary looks at the remaining pasta on her plate and gets up to scrape the food into Clint’s bowl. Suddenly she isn’t hungry. 

 

“Okay so I’m just letting you know that you just ran through that yield sign without checking over your shoulder. And I mean, it’s fine for now because they were stopped at a red light, but like, you didn’t even check, so—“

“Alec, did we die?” Isabelle asks calmly, not pulling her eyes off the road. “Did I crash the car?”

“Okay, no, but—“

“Then I really don’t understand why you’re complaining to me right now.” 

In the backseat, Jace laughs. Alec promptly grabs the lever on the side of his seat and leans back as far as the seat allows, emitting a groan from Jace as his legs are inevitably crushed. 

“How can you lecture Isabelle about road safety while you practice such unsafe chair etiquette?” Jace demands, kicking weakly against Alec’s seat while Alec stares up at the roof of Isabelle’s new car. The upholstery is clean for now, the scent of new car still heavy in the air that flows through the vents. Soon enough, he knows, the ground will be littered with empty water bottles and the windows smudged with Max’s hand prints. 

“Don’t encourage her.” Alec reprimands as he finally pulls his seat back up. He glances at Isabelle, who’s relaxed as ever as she turns into the school parking lot. “Izzy I know you don’t think this is serious, but it is. You have to be careful, I’m not always going to be here to read road signs for you—“

“Big brother,” Isabelle cuts him off firmly, “I know you’re more uptight than usual because of what happened last night but I’m doing great and— _fuck!”_

The car lurches to a stop, making all three of the Lightwoods rock forward and wince at the tautness of their seatbelts. Isabelle takes a shaky breath and glances apologetically at Alec, her previous monologue apparently abandoned. 

“Speaking of last night,” Jace comments, “aren’t those your fellow hostages that our dear sister almost ran over?”

Alec looks up to see Clary and Simon, both staring in bewilderment at them through the windshield. What is it with Alec and those two sharing near death experiences?

“I have to talk to them.” He mumbles, reaching for his bag and unlocking his seatbelt. “Isabelle, don’t you dare bring this car above five miles per hour in this lot ever again.”

“What—you’re getting out here?” Isabelle asks, incredulous as Alec opens the door and hops out. 

“I’d like to minimize my chances of death.” Alec says before closing the door and speed walking toward Simon and Clary. Apparently already recovered from nearly being plowed down by a red Mercedes, the two continue their conversation without so much looking up at Alec as he approaches. “Hey.”

They glance up, Simon startling backwards because apparently Alec stepping in front of the kid to protect him from an armed criminal isn’t even enough to put him at ease. Clary merely stares at him, almost incredulous that he’s interacting with her. 

“Hey,” she says slowly, resuming the trek towards the building as Alec falls in step, “what’s up?”

Not wanting to spend time on niceties, Alec cuts to the chase. “We could’ve died yesterday.”

“Dude,” Simon sighs, “it’s seven in the morning.”

“Alec, I’m sorry.” Clary blurts, suddenly coming to a complete stop and subsequently stopping Simon and Alec along with her. She’s looking at him with wide, shining eyes and her hand is clutching at the strap of her bag, turning her knuckles white. “I shouldn’t have been so cocky. You could’ve gotten really hurt and it would’ve been my fault, there was a better way to handle it and I just—I didn’t _think_ I just _acted_ —“

“Uh,” Alec interrupts, “fuck that.”

She blinks at him. “What?”

“You did the right thing.” Alec clarifies, beginning to walk again because he’s not going to be late to first period if he can help it. “I mean, you were right, weren’t you? It wasn’t a real gun. And because of what you did, we actually gained something.”

“What did we gain?” Simon inquires, putting a hand on Clary’s shoulder and tugging her back so she no longer divides them down the middle. Alec watches the way his hand lingers, his fingers digging into the puffy material of her coat as he gives her encouragement. Like Alec would do for Izzy, really. “Other than a badass scar for you.”

“Information.” Alec says earnestly. “How many other criminals in the city use a gun that shoots ice? Now we can track him down easier. Fray, aren’t your parents both cops? Do they have any leads?”

“Well actually,” Clary says with a bitter edge to her voice, “Luke doesn’t believe that it wasn’t a regular gun.”

“What?” Alec balks. He remembers the sharp, stinging sensation of cold on his cheek. The immense relief in his chest when that was the only pain that came. The wetness that came away on his fingertips, which made everything click into place. “He thinks a regular bullet gave me a hairline scratch? What kind of cop _is_ he?”

“Captain of his unit, actually.” Clary replies defensively, and Alec immediately regrets the tone of his voice. It’s another case of what Jace calls Alec’s “lack of sensitivity to other people’s feelings” and at least this time Alec can recognize it. “I don’t know, he’s just—I don’t know. Luke has always listened to me, he’s always logical, he always tells me the truth. Something feels so off now.”

Alec does not want to plant himself in the middle of family drama. He has no idea whether Luke, whoever he is, knows what he’s talking about. One thing he does know, though, is that something needs to be done. 

“Look, I have younger siblings. They run the store when I’m not working.”

“Yeah, Isabelle and Jace.” Simon supplies. “We know. We don’t just shop there to annoy you, despite what you may think.” 

“I am not going to let that freak come back and try to rob the place again while my siblings are working. If he sees our store as an easy target, which he no doubt does now that he’s a couple hundred dollars richer, he’ll come back. Or one of his buddies will. Maybe with a gun that can actually do some damage.”

And he’s been thinking about this nonstop since last night. The idea of a gun pointed in Isabelle or Jace’s face is enough to make Alec feel short of breath. And what would they have done? Would Isabelle have tried to run? Would Jace have tried to fight? 

They reach the main staircase, where students are hurrying up the steps and through the double doors to avoid being caught in the hall after the bell rings. Alec’s previous hope of getting to class on time is no longer priority, and he tries his best to tower over the two sophomores and be as intimidating as possible. 

“Your parents need to get on this.” He tells them, ignoring the spark of anger in Clary’s eyes. “Even if they want to believe it was just a regular gun. Find the owner of that gun and arrest them before my family gets hurt.”

“Why do _you_ get to order me around?” Clary demands, taking one step forward as Simon takes one step back, his hand lingering on Clary’s forearm as if he’s ready to pull her back. 

“Because you could’ve gotten me shot.” Alec bites back. He feels a shrapnel of guilt nestle its way into his chest at the look on her face, the way she physically flinches at his accusation. This isn’t really why he’s angry, and he knows it. But it’ll hurt her, maybe make her listen, and that’s what he needs. “Know this, Fray. I said you did the right thing because _I_ was the one who would’ve gotten hurt. If it were my siblings—even a scratch on either of them is unacceptable.”

“She can’t control what her parents do, dude.” Simon insists, apparently angry enough to finally involve himself. “And you don’t get to lecture her on something that never happened. Jace and Isabelle are fine, last time I saw them—which was when they almost ran us over in their luxury convertible five minutes ago.”

“Simon, it’s fine.” Clary finally says, avoiding making eye contact with Alec as she tugs at her friend’s sleeve. 

“It’s not fine. You get robbed once and you’re demanding that the entire police department marks it as top priority. People where I live? We’re lucky if we don’t get mugged walking in our own neighborhood. Your parents own convenience stores,” Simon says, “not the world.”

And they leave, hurrying up the stairs together while Alec tries to process everything that’s just been thrown at him with so much anger from somewhere deep inside this kid who, previously, had been too afraid to so much as look at Alec. 

The bell rings while he stands there and looks out helplessly across the deserted lot. From where he stands, he can see Isabelle’s bright, gleaming red convertible. 

 

Simon spends his life searching for warmth. Both literally, he thinks as he stands in his kitchen and stares at his sink, slowly dripping every few seconds to prevent the pipes from freezing, and figuratively. 

When the heating in his house goes off, which has been happening more often as of late, Simon heads to the Fray household. If he’s being honest, he goes to Clary’s mostly every day. It’s not just for their adequate heating.

Simon loves his mother. It’s just that ever since Becky went off to school and his mother picked up more shifts at the hospital, he’s felt a chasm between them. If it’s anyone’s fault, though, Simon knows it’s his own. In May, when he turns sixteen, he’ll get a job. And then the heating won’t go off and his mom won’t have to work so much, and he’ll spend more evenings getting warmth from his own home instead of having to impede on Clary’s.

Until then, though, he walks through the snow to get to Clary’s apartment six blocks away. 

“Clary isn’t here yet, kiddo.” Luke says when he opens the door, still ushering Simon inside nevertheless. “And I’m balancing some reports right now, so you might be bored for awhile.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Simon shrugs. “I come here for the food, not the company.” 

Luke humors him and laughs at the joke before reverting back to parent mode and putting a hand up to Simon’s cheek. “You’re freezing, huh?”

“It’s January.” Simon replies easily, making his way to the kitchen so he doesn’t have to maintain eye contact. He can hear the heavy thudding of Luke’s favorite boots on the hardwood floor as he’s followed. 

“True,” Luke concedes, “but it’s not a long walk. Something you wanna tell me?”

“Yeah.” Simon closes the fridge door just slightly to look at Luke, who’s got his arms crossed and his eyebrows arched. “You’re out of Diet Coke.”

Luke opens his mouth to say something and Simon blocks him out with the fridge door before he can. He doesn’t want to be difficult, but he also knows what’ll happen if Luke finds out about the heat. It’s happened before. Luke calls the company, spends an hour on hold, gets denied service because it’s not _his_ heating, then goes to Simon’s house to try fixing it himself. And the whole thing is just a reminder of the fact that this doesn’t happen to most people, because most people aren’t in his—situation. At least not any of the people he knows. 

“I’ll get on that.” Luke finally says. “I’ll be in the office, okay? Come get me if you need me.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sometimes warmth is hard to come by. Luke, Jocelyn, and Clary are easily the best source of comfort for him. The closest thing to a family aside from his own, and more available. He just wishes they could stop trying to help him so he could stop having to deny them. 

Simon digs out the Chinese leftovers from two nights ago and settles on the couch, immediately pulling the two knit blankets from either side over his lap. He stretches out, feet on the coffee table, and turns on The Office. 

He’s relaxed for all of two seconds when there’s a sudden, frantic knocking on the front door. Simon glances back at the closed office door, where Luke is apparently so absorbed in his paperwork that he didn’t hear. A few seconds pass while Simon puts his food aside and the knocking starts up again, more persistent. 

“Okay, jeez.” He hurries over, socks sliding on the wood floor. 

Simon opens the door to see Maia Roberts, one of the most beautiful girls in the world, and behind her stands someone he doesn’t know, who is one of the most beautiful boys in the world. That’s the first thing he notices. The second thing he notices is Maia’s arm, which is bent. The wrong way. 

“Oh, holy shit.” Simon opens the door entirely and lets Maia stomp past him. The boy stands cautiously at the door, looking unsure as his eyes follow Maia. 

“Where’s Luke?” Maia demands. Her voice sounds remarkably calm despite the fact that her arm is _bent the wrong way._ If anything, she just sounds pissed off. At Simon’s stunned silence, she gives him a murderous glare and snaps her fingers at him. The fingers attached to the hand attached to the arm that isn’t bent the wrong way.

“I, uh, he’s working—“ Simon stammers, glancing back at the dude who’s just lingering in the doorway. “Um, is this—?”

“Don’t let him in.” Maia snaps. “He followed me here.”

“I had to.” 

“You really didn’t.” 

The boy looks imploringly at Simon. “The bodega I work at was robbed. And by robbed, I mean a guy came in with a big machine that made a fucking _earthquake._ And a big metal shelf fell on her and hurt her arm, and when I tried to call the cops she said she knew a cop to report it to. And she just took off. So what was I supposed to do? Let her run off with a broken arm that happened under my watch?”

It seems reasonable enough—the response, not the ridiculous situation, which he’ll deal with in a second. In fact, Simon thinks it’s pretty admirable. He looks at Maia for a rebuttal, but she’s no longer looking at them. Her eyes are squeezed shut, her jaw clenched. 

Simon doesn’t know Maia Roberts very well. He knows that she’s been around for about a year now, ever since Luke started a program to mentor youth who wanted a career in law enforcement. He knows that she visits every week, but that she always avoids making conversation with him and Clary. He knows that one time when Luke sprained his ankle, Maia brought him a Subway footlong. 

But Simon doesn’t need to know Maia personally to know that her arm probably hurts like hell. He hurries to Luke’s office and bangs on the door, probably more than necessary, and calls through the door, “Luke it’s an emergency!”

It takes longer than it should for Luke to open the door, and when he does he makes sure to close it behind him. Simon watches Luke twist the knob behind him, as if he’s checking to make sure it’s locked. Before he can begin to question that, Luke pushes past him and he’s reminded of the situation at hand. 

“Oh my God,” Luke sounds more frantic than Simon’s ever heard, “what happened?”

“Robbery.” Maia manages to say between grit teeth. “Tell him, bodega guy.”

“Uh, yeah.” Bodega guy finally steps fully into the apartment, his eyes flickering between Simon, Maia, and landing on Luke. “I work at Crenshaw’s and—and this guy came in with a huge machine thing. I thought maybe it was for repairs or something, I don’t know? And then he said it was a robbery and I panicked and said that I had a gun under the desk—that was stupid, I know—so he turned on this machine thing and the whole store started _shaking_. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s what happened. A supply shelf fell on her and pinned her arm. By the time I got it off of her, the guy was gone.”

“Okay, we’re going to the hospital.” Luke decides, hand firmly on Maia’s back as he steers her to the door. He’s avoiding looking at Simon. 

“Should I come?” Bodega guy asks. “To like, report the crime?”

“You can report a robbery at the station, kid.” Luke says absently as he searches for his keys. 

“I need Maia as a witness, right? No one is going to believe me if I tell them someone came in with a fucking earthquake machine.”

“Listen,” Luke finally pauses by the door and looks at the guy with an expression that Simon can’t decipher, “I know you think that’s what happened kid, but there isn’t technology that can do that.”

“But it _happened._ ” Bodega guy snaps. He doesn’t sound particularly like he’s trying to convince Luke, more like he’s trying to get Luke to stop being an idiot. Which, Simon thinks, is a rarity. Most _adults_ are intimidated by Luke. And here this guy is, probably only a year or two older than Simon himself, with all the confidence and bravado in the world. “I saw it with my own two perfectly functional eyes, thank you very much. You can brush me off all you’d like, but that means that _you’re_ the one who’s delusional. Not me.” 

Luke looks about as stunned as Simon feels, but another wince from Maia is all it takes for him to shut back down. “You can go report that to someone at the station. Someone who doesn’t have a kid with a broken arm to attend to.”

“Luke, it did happen.” Maia insists weakly. “I saw it.”

“We can discuss this later, okay, we need to go.” 

Simon is left alone in the apartment with bodega guy, who looks stunned. Simon thinks about the time when he and Clary were eleven and they wanted attention from Luke and Jocelyn, so they’d made up a story about a gang of bad guys who tried to stop them on their way to school every day. In the obviously fake story, these thugs would stop little Clary and little Simon, for no real reason, and the kids would beat them up and nonchalantly continue to elementary school. 

Jocelyn had humored them by playing along. She’d told them that they were very brave, that maybe they could start working at the station. But Luke, bizarrely enough, walked them to school the next day. Just to be sure. 

Luke isn’t the kind to not listen. He isn’t the kind to disregard a single person’s story, let alone two people—five if you count him, Clary, and Alec Lightwood.

“It happened.” Bodega guy says, his voice quiet. He doesn’t seem to be trying to convince Simon. But then he looks up at Simon, suddenly calm. “I suppose you don’t believe me, either. I’ll let myself out and return to my ruined store, which I guess was destroyed by technology that doesn’t fucking exist—“

“I believe you.” Simon interrupts. He isn’t sure if he should tell this total stranger about yesterday. Things just feel wrong, he thinks, and not wrong in a way that can be ignored. “You know the Shortstop? That convenience store on Mercer?”

“The one with the hot cashier?” Bodega guy asks with a trace of a smile. 

“Jace? I _guess_ he’s alright looking—“

“Alec.” Bodega guy clarifies. He’s fully smiling now. 

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. Alec.” Simon clear his throat, looking away from the smirk that’s burning into his existence. “Um, well Alec was actually working when it was robbed. Yesterday. I was there. And uh, he was shot—“

_“What?”_

“—with a bullet made of ice. He’s fine! I should’ve started with that.” 

“Let me guess.” Bodega guy says with a humorless smile. “You told that cop and he ignored it? Brushed you off? That’s what cops do, I guess.”

“No, Luke isn’t just a cop to me. He’s—“ _A friend, a practical family member, a father,_ “—someone I can trust. And he doesn’t usually act like this. Something is up. Would you—“ 

Simon is on the verge of possibly doing something very stupid. There’s a chance he’s being overdramatic, he knows that, and if all of this is just a coincidence, he’ll apologize for wasting everyone’s time. But he just feels like this is real, very real, startlingly real, and he’ll have to apologize even more if he does nothing and someone ends up dead. 

Sometimes he watches movies and there’s one character who has the ability to prevent all the conflict. The thing is, they’re always too stupid to see it. He always wants to shake them by the shoulders and tell them to open their eyes, but that can’t happen and he spends the rest of the movie festering in annoyance over that _one_ guy. 

Simon doesn’t want to be that guy. 

“Would you mind staying here for awhile while I call some people? I think we need to figure this out.” 

Bodega guy shrugs. “Sure thing. I don’t need to go back to work, anyways. Maybe my boss will find the wreck and think I died. Maybe he’ll think, I should’ve been nicer to Magnus.”

“Magnus?” Simon repeats. It sounds like a superhero name. “I’m Simon.”

“Does Alec the cashier happen to be one of the people you’re calling?” Magnus asks, and when Simon nods he briefly looks panicked. “I don’t want our first formal meeting to be in my work uniform.”

That’s how Simon ends up sitting on the couch with Magnus Bane—a total stranger who happens to be wearing Simon’s favorite green shirt and eating his Chinese leftovers—waiting for Clary, the guy he told off just this morning, and the guy’s curious siblings to arrive. 

It would be a weird movie. But also, Simon thinks, the kind of movie he might be interested in watching


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m just saying, Iz, he’s acting weird.” Jace glances up ahead, where Alec is stomping his way up a flight of concrete stairs, making sure his brother isn’t listening. “Ever since last night. And that’s understandable considering the screaming match with Mayrse and Robert, but I was under the impression that he would be back to normal by now.”

“He’s fine.” Isabelle declares without looking up from her phone. 

“You think wanting to meet with Clary Fray and Simon Lewis twice in one day is normal for Alec?” Jace whispers incredulously. “Or anyone?”

“Well, I want to meet with them. And you do too, or else you wouldn’t be here.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you know Alec’s been acting weird and you want to see why. And you think Simon Lewis is cute.”

“I’m reporting that comment as a violent crime against me.” Jace mutters. “I’m here because _this_ is weird. Alec even being here is weirder than anything he’s done in the last day. We’re looking out for him. We’re his bodyguards.”

“How are you walking so slow?” Alec calls from the top step of the second flight. 

“Alec,” Jace huffs as he jogs to catch up to his brother, “do you really want to be here? Clearly this group is not compatible seeing as you all had a heated argument this morning after a five minute conversation.”

“Simon apologized.” Alec says. “And he said something happened that would interest me, so. I intend to find out what it is.” 

“Lewis _apologized?”_ Jace doesn’t know Simon Lewis all the well, really. He knows that he comes into the Shortstop almost every day, buys gummy worms, gets overly defensive when Jace informs him that gummy worms aren’t even a superior candy, and leaves with Clary Fray. Those two seem to be physically melded together. So maybe Jace doesn’t know enough about Simon to really make a judgement here, but the mental image of Simon Lewis giving Alec a heartfelt apology over the phone is...bizarre. To say the least. 

“Well, he said something about how I was being a spoiled rich kid but that he was sorry for getting worked up about it.” Alec stops in front of one of the many identical wooden doors lining the hall and knocks firmly, Izzy and Jace on either side of him.

“He called you a spoiled rich kid?” Isabelle asks with an offended edge to her voice, as if she was the one insulted. “Why did you take that from him?”

“Because he was right.”

The door opens before either Jace or Isabelle can react to this startling omission. Sure enough, Simon Lewis is standing in the doorway with a timid smile, looking just the slightest bit scared. That’s understandable. When the Lightwoods stand in formation, the sheer beauty and power that flows from their aura is enough to strike fear into anyone. In Jace’s opinion, anyways. 

“What do you want to show me?” Alec asks, apparently not willing to waste any time. 

“It’s actually what I want to tell you.” Simon corrects, sparing a glance at both Isabelle and Jace. “Uh—“

“They’re my siblings.” Alec says at the first sign of Simon’s hesitation. “What I know, they know.”

“Okay, I guess.” Simon looks at Jace again, this time maintaining eye contact long enough for Jace to feel singled out. “Did you come all the way here to tell me that gummy worms aren’t the superior candy? That’s dedication.” 

“I came to protect Alec from any possible danger.” Jace corrects, ignoring his brother’s indignant scoff. “But while I’m here, I might as well. You know that coating something in sugar doesn’t automatically make it good.”

“Can we go inside?” Isabelle mutters, already pushing past Simon. “You two can banter in the hall.”

Jace steps into a tastefully decorated living room. The vibe is relaxed, like they’re all just meeting to study or play cards. The look on Clary’s face unfortunately contradicts the comfortable atmosphere; she looks like someone who’s waiting to receive a death sentence. Or maybe that’s just because she doesn’t want to be spending time with Alec. 

Clary is sitting on the couch, listening intently to someone Jace has never seen before. The guy seems to be recounting a story, using lots of sweeping hand gestures for emphasis. He stops when Clary glances up at Jace and his siblings as they file in. She forces herself to smile at them. Jace smiles back, hoping that their lack of familiarity won’t prevent her from being at least a little calmed down by his show of solidarity. 

Jace has always liked Clary. She’s funny and sweet and never gets angry when Jace miscalculates the change, which happens a lot. In all honesty, he envies her relationship with Simon. Jace has Alec and Isabelle, built-in best friends, but he admires Simon and Clary’s ability to find each other without living under the same roof. 

“You can...sit.” Clary tells them, gesturing at the two vacant armchairs. Jace is the first to step forward and take a seat, sinking into green corduroy and arching an eyebrow at his siblings. Alec seems content to just hover by the door, but reluctantly follows Izzy’s lead and finally joins the group’s circle.

“Okay, uh, introductions.” Simon’s discomfort is glaringly obvious as his glance flickers from one person to the next. Finally it lands on the stranger. “This is Magnus. And Magnus, that’s Alec, Isabelle, and Jace.”

“We know Magnus.” Alec says, and Magnus looks pleased by this. Jace studies the guy’s face, and he has no idea what Alec is talking about. 

“I don’t know Magnus.” He says, looking at Izzy. She shakes her head. “Alec, by ‘we’ you mean ‘you’ because me and Iz have no clue who this guy is.”

“What? He comes into the store all the time.” 

“Only when you’re working, then.” Isabelle says with a faint smirk. 

“A coincidence, I suppose.” Magnus says innocently, sparing a coy smile in Alec’s direction. “But just so you know, I appreciate your service.”

Jace watches with amusement as Alec’s cheeks slowly go pink, his eyes stuck on Magnus like he’s witnessing a great act of nature. So far, this isn’t turning out as expected. 

“Uh…anyways,” Simon continues slowly, “Magnus works at a bodega that was robbed by a guy with an earthquake machine—“

“The fuck is an earthquake machine?” Jace asks, because he feels like that’s a reasonable question. Simon gives him an affronted glare for interrupting. 

“A machine that makes earthquakes. And anyways, it ended up hurting our friend Maia and now she’s at the hospital with a broken arm. The thing is, when they reported it to Luke, he just brushed them off.”

“Just like with the gun.” Clary interjects, looking primarily at Alec. “And before you even ask, this isn’t normal for Luke. He always listens to us, no matter what. So something is wrong.”

“So it’s like I said.” Alec points out. “Someone got hurt. Maybe if you’d listened—“

“Seriously dude?” Simon seems to be in awe. “I thought we were over this.”

“I’m just saying—“

“We couldn’t have even prevented this! There’s no way we could’ve—“

“Hey.” Isabelle manages to cut through the argument without raising her voice. She looks incredibly commanding from where Jace sits. Her back is straight, her ankles crossed, her arms draped over the sides of her armchair as if it’s a throne. “Arguing isn’t going to help a thing. Simon, you must’ve called us for a reason. What do you suggest we do about it?”

“Well it’s clear that the cops just won’t believe us. I think we need to catch one of these people.”

That piques Jace’s interest. If there’s anything he hates, it’s inaction. He does not want to sit here and complain about the dangers of living in the city, he wants to fix it. Erase the room to complain. 

“That seems dangerous.” Magnus says warily. “I mean, if it’s something like what I saw today, I don’t see how we _could_ catch them. In a second they could just flip the switch and have shelves falling on us again. Plus, there could be more.”

“More what?” Alec inquires. 

“Weapons.” Magnus looks around at them, seemingly gauging their reactions. When no one says anything, he sits up straighter and continues, “Alec, did the robber at your place manage to get off with any money?”

“Some.” Alec says, and his expression darkens with this. “Not all, though. Fray interrupted him before he could get it all out.”

“Well mine didn’t get any. Someone confident in their weaponry would not hesitate to get up there and start taking money. They wouldn’t run or shoot at the first sign of danger. So, logically, they aren’t confident. These were both unconventional weapons, both probably fairly new in invention, and both within one day in a roughly small target area. Same supplier. So there could be many more, and with every day they likely get more advanced and polished.”

“So we have to act fast.” Jace murmurs.

“So, what? We just wait for one to come back to our places? They probably won’t, knowing that they know it didn’t work on either of us.” 

“And even if they did show up, we can’t be sure none of us would get hurt.”

“And—”

“So.” Jace speaks up again, directly cutting off Alec because sometimes when his mind is moving he can’t focus on other things, like being polite. “You said it’s weird for your dad to dismiss you?”

“Alien encounter levels of weird.” Simon confirms. 

“Has he mentioned anything about other reports?” 

“He hasn’t been home much.” Clary says. “Mom either. They’re both working overtime, and when they aren’t they’re just in the study doing paperwork or something.”

Jace glances past Clary, spotting two doors on the adjacent wall. There’s one that’s open, giving Jace the slightest peak of a room with sky blue walls and a movie poster—a bedroom, presumably. And the other is closed. 

Jace gets up, feeling five pairs of eyes on him as he makes his way to the door. 

“Uh, that’s Luke’s study.” Simon pipes up. “He doesn’t want us going in there.”

“Wonder why.” Jace mutters, trying the knob. It doesn’t budge. Looking back at the group, he sees Izzy already rising from her chair and simultaneously pulling loose a bobby pin from her messy updo of black locks. Jace scoots over to make room for his sister, who inspects the knob for a quick second before sliding in her pin and receiving a satisfying _click_ mere seconds later. “Must be a world record.”

“Are you—you’re seriously breaking into my dad’s office?” Clary sounds one parts appalled and two parts impressed. She doesn’t move a muscle to stop them, so Jace takes this as an invitation to step inside. 

It’s a relatively small room, two desks pushed against either wall. One desk is messy, the other neat. Jace immediately searches through drawers of the neater one, coming up empty after a few minutes of rifling. And then—

“Got something.” Isabelle triumphantly lifts a manila folder from her spot on the floor beside the disaster desk. They emerge back into the living room with the rest of the group still staring, though Alec looks resigned to his siblings’ tactics. 

“What’s that?” Clary asks. Her voice is unusually high. 

“January 2nd. Labeled as ‘Valentine Account,’” Isabelle reads from the tab. “Written, not typed.”

“Written?” Magnus echoes. “That doesn’t seem very official.”

“I don’t think this is a police report.” Isabelle murmurs, flipping open the folder and skimming the pages. “‘This has to be at least the sixteenth report of an elemental weapon used in the city. The targets were at first on the outskirts of the city, now moving in quickly to downtown Brooklyn. This report details a pharmacy, attempted robbery. Victims report that the assailant used a whip charged with an electrical current. No one was hurt, but once again the suspect retreated.’”

“That has to be a police report.” Clary says weakly, rising from her seat slowly. “It has to be—“

“January 4th.” Isabelle reads. “‘Another robbery. This time, reported by Clary. Gun was used at the Shortstop convenience store, shooting bullets allegedly made of ice. I had to convince Clary that this was not the case, but she saw the evidence, as did Simon and the other witness. More citizens are realizing what is happening. We don’t have much time to find Valentine’s location.’”

“Who’s Valentine?” Simon mumbles, looking paler by the second. “Why would—? Luke wouldn’t write this. He wouldn’t lie to us.”

Clary moves from her lingering spot by the couch to grab the file from Isabelle. Her breath hitches when she looks down at the pages, immediately reading the final page. “‘January 5th. A tip at the station may finally lead us somewhere. We will be investigating tonight, hopefully for the last time. 86 Fireside Road.’”

There’s a silence in the room. Clary honestly looks like she may faint, and Jace edges his way beside her in case that actually happens. Finally, Simon speaks, his voice wavering just slightly. 

“Luke is not a bad guy.” He tells them firmly. “He may not have told us, but—but he’s a cop, I mean they aren’t supposed to give confidential information to civilians.”

“He didn’t have to lie.” Alec retorts, and Jace resists the urge to smack his brother. “You heard what he wrote. He tried to convince Clary that it wasn’t true, that none of it was real.”

“He told me he was working tonight.” Clary says quietly. “Simon, he said—“

“And he is! He’s probably investigating with the unit! He doesn’t mean that just him and Jocelyn are going to investigate whatever this is, that makes no sense!”

Clary takes a deep breath. She snaps the folder shut and blindly offers it to whoever is willing to take it, which happens to be Alec. They stand in hushed silence as she marches to the door, grabbing a keyring off the row of hooks. 

“Come on.” She says. “We’re going to find out why he lied.”

Jace looks to Alec. He always does when he’s uncertain. Alec is watching Clary and Simon promptly pull on their coats and lace up their shoes with an unreadable expression. His gaze flickers over to Izzy, who shrugs and grabs her coat. 

Part of Jace know this isn’t a great idea. It’s dangerous and reckless and irresponsible, yet somehow he thinks it’s important. 

The gist of it is, Jace has felt useless for as long as his mind can recollect. Around age nine, when he would sit in the hall and listen to Robert and Mayrse yell in the kitchen over things he didn’t quite understand—yet knew were his fault—Jace had started to think that maybe he was the bad guy in the story. Obviously his parents hadn’t wanted him, or else they wouldn’t have given him up for adoption at nine months old. 

He’d started thinking that there was something inherently wrong with him. Something that made his parents give him away, made the Lightwoods stressed and distant, made him unable to get close to anyone beside his siblings. 

Jace is always looking for a redemption story. Something he can do that will turn the world on its head and allow him to be _good._ Allow people to respect him and love him and want him. 

This seems like a good enough opportunity. 

“Let’s go, I guess.” He says to his siblings as he shoves an arm through his coat. 

“I don’t think this is what I signed up for.” Magnus objects suddenly, looking at them with a strange expression. “I was just trying to report a crime and make sure that girl’s bone didn’t fall out.”

“Aren’t you curious?” Alec pipes up, surprising Jace. Alec is never the one to convince people to do something questionable. He’s usually the one that needs convincing. 

“You can call me and tell me how it works out, darling.” Magnus says, yet he’s not making any move toward the door. He’s standing firmly by the couch as the others mill out, just he and Alec with Jace a good enough distance away that they probably don’t notice him observing.

“Weren’t you scared when that guy came in?” Alec continues, putting a splayed hand to his own chest. “I was, when it happened to me. I think if we can figure this out, we can keep that from happening to other people.”

Magnus looks at him for a long while, his guarded expression melting away to reveal a bottom layer that makes him appear much younger, much more human. He finally grabs his bag and follows Alec out the door, Jace bringing up the rear and glancing one more time into this strange, foreign apartment before shutting the door to go investigate its inhabitants. 

They end up taking two cars because neither Izzy’s Mercedes nor Clary’s Honda can fit all six of them. Jace opts to ride with Simon and Clary, telling Isabelle that he can’t afford to be keeling over from car sickness if they’re about to be in potential danger. 

Really, though, he thinks they need someone to talk to. 

“What’ll we do if your dad is already there, investigating?” Jace inquires, and Clary gives him a sharp look in the mirror. She stays silent. Simon turns in the passenger seat slightly, looking at Jace with no irritation, no teasing, just exhaustion. It’s new. Jace doesn’t like it. 

“Then we’ll see his car out front and leave.” Simon replies. “But if not, we’re going in. Because whatever he sees in there, he won’t tell us.”

He turns back around and leans back into his seat with an abrupt, lifeless thud. 

“You know, I’m sure it’s fine.” Jace says casually, looking out at the blurring city lights as Clary speeds past the expanding metropolis of downtown. “It’s probably just cop business. There’ll probably be police tape and stuff, so then we’ll just go get fro-yo and bond over our almost-adventure.”

Simon’s silent for a few beats, but he finally responds with, “Only somewhere we can get gummy worms as toppings.”

“Oh, Lewis, I was just being so—“

“No offense but,” Clary cuts Jace another look in the rearview mirror, “please shut up. It’s not—it’s not something to laugh about. It’s _serious_.”

Jace is startled. He thinks it’s pretty clear that he’s just trying to lighten the mood, to lift spirits. _She’s under the impression that her dad has lied to her about something enormous_ , says his voice of reason which is just Alec’s voice reconstructed to assemble whatever counterargument his brain has. 

Still, it’s not like Jace doesn’t understand. He knows, perhaps better than anyone, what it’s like to wonder who his parents—his _real parents_ —really are. Really were. He’s never been lied to about it, thank God for that. Could he take it, to find out that everything he’d believed was a lie?

He shudders at the thought and decides to stop talking. 

The car pulls up to what appears to be an office building. Its countless windows reflect the surrounding lights, and the top is crowned by the reflection of the moon that watches them from the inky black sky. It looks ordinary, if not a bit bigger than most buildings in the area. 

“Are you sure this is right?” Jace finally asks when neither Simon nor Clary make any more to exit the car. 

“I think so.” Clary murmurs. They sit in silence still, no one commenting on how bizarre the night has become in such a short time. The building is technically non- threatening, with no police tape or bloody weapons discarded in the parking lot. Still, Jace feels as though he’s standing at the edge of an abyss, looking down and getting ready to be pushed. 

A sharp rap on the window makes them all jump. 

“Are you guys getting out?” Isabelle asks, voice muffled through the glass. Jace glances back up at Simon, at his hand which rests on the seatbelt to unbuckle but doesn’t actually move. As soon as Clary gets out, Simon’s body wakes back up and follows.

“No police tape.” Clary observes. “No cruiser, either. It doesn’t look like he’s been here.”

“Maybe he’s just not here yet.” Simon says, looking around until someone can give him confirmation. It’s Magnus who nods, giving Simon a small smile. 

“How about we just wait? Give it a few minutes. If no one shows up, we’ll go in ourselves. And until then we can do icebreakers!”

That’s how they end up sitting in a loose formation. Simon and Clary are huddled together on the hood of Clary’s car, against which Magnus is leaning and scrolling through what appears to be Twitter. Isabelle and Jace sit together, knees touching while Alec stands over them with the alertness of a protective mother animal. 

“Do you go to our school?” Jace asks, extending a leg to poke at Magnus with the toe of his sneaker. He looks up from his phone, seemingly startled to actually be engaged in an icebreaker. There’s something about Magnus that’s entirely new, that Jace hasn’t seen in anyone before. Not just his ability to make Alec’s face form a weird, almost trancelike expression. 

“Yeah, I’m a senior.” Magnus confirms casually. “I rarely leave the third floor if I can manage. Underclassmen are animals.”

Alec cracks a grin at this, which he hides by turning his head as if checking once more to see if anyone will come through the parking entry. Isabelle digs her elbow into Jace’s ribs, a subtle gesture which means _can you believe our brother is laughing at a joke told by someone he just met an hour ago?_

“Have you ever had Alec in any of your classes?” Jace asks innocently. He ignores the look Alec is trying to give him. 

“AP Euro.” 

“Really?” Alec genuinely sounds caught off guard. “I don’t remember you being there.”

“It was first period, so I was usually late or asleep.” Magnus shrugs. “And I didn’t get called on that much. I remember you, though. The only one who could answer the tough questions and usually you’d do it without looking up from your phone.”

Isabelle’s elbow digs in so hard now that Jace feels as though she may inadvertently break one of his ribs. He decides not to further press into Alec’s possible crush. Alec gives some sort of reply, something casual and dry enough to cover the fact that he’s probably flustered by the compliment. 

Jace glances up at Simon and Clary, quiet together under the glow of the nearby lightpost. He doesn’t know the two of them all that well, other than the occasional class and, of course, the store. But he knows things aren’t supposed to be this quiet, for either of them. 

Clary looks as if she’s neck-high in introspection, whereas Simon just has his eyes fixed on the street, waiting. He’s also, Jace realizes, shivering. His jacket is much too lightweight for the biting January air and his curls are being ruffled by the wind. His nose is red. 

Jace has one arm out of his own coat when Simon and Alec simultaneously move from their respective spots. A car is pulling through the space, which makes Clary snap out of the daze she’s in. Her face goes from relief, to confusion, to a sudden uncertain sort of fear. 

“That’s not Luke.” She murmurs, almost in warning. 

Once again, Alec steps to the front of the pack, arms going out just slightly. Probably an impulse. The sleek red car that pulls in and stops in front of them, and as the engine sputters into silence the driver’s side door opens to reveal a girl with a thick white cast around her arm. 

“Maia.” Simon breathes the name as a sigh of relief. “Are you okay? Your wrist?”

“Very broken.” She announces, slamming her car door loud enough to make Clary flinch. “And just a tip? Next time you’re going to steal from Luke’s office and sneak off to his secret assignment, don’t leave the file on the living room floor. _God_ you’re lucky I got back before him.”

“Before him?” Simon asks. “He didn’t take you back home? That—that doesn’t sound like Luke. When Clary chipped a _tooth_ last year he hovered for days.”

“Nah, he got a call from the precinct. Armed robbery somewhere, I don’t know. Before you ask, no, it wasn’t a crazy supervillain weapon.” She says this with a pointed look at Magnus. “The code was for firearm. Regular, non-earthquake-causing firearm.”

“So let’s go.” Clary says suddenly, jumping down from the hood. “If he’s busy with that we’ll have at least an hour before he gets back from processing.”

“Are we sure about this?” Jace asks, willing to be the one who voices the group concern. “If there’s something dangerous in there and we get killed just because we got ahead of ourselves in a conspiracy theory—well, our parents are going to be pissed.”

“I know something’s wrong.” Clary insists. She’s now standing right on the edge of the halo from the floodlight, as if she’s the commanding lead role of whatever twisted and unfinished play they’re acting in. Her hair looks like fire in this lighting. “You don’t have to come with me. I’ll go alone if I need to. But I can’t just ignore what’s been happening and I can’t just let Luke lie to us anymore. I need to know why.”

There’s a silence, the seven of them standing in a formation now tight enough to be considered a full circle. Jace doesn’t know these people, save his trusted siblings and his occasional customers. A single glance at his siblings confirms that they’re ready, that they sense the imbalance in the universe and stand armed to correct it. Magnus looks more interested than anything, his bizarre eyes glittering as if this is all a story he’d like to watch unfold. Simon looks oddly frail in his light jacket, his entire body shuddering either from the cold or the knowledge that he’ll go through with this plan even as his common sense probably screams not to. And Maia, who Jace has just met not even two minutes ago, looks ruefully at the building as if it personally wronged her. 

“Well.” Jace says finally, realizing that everyone is steady and ready besides himself. He needs to do this, though, because this is his chance to be a good guy. To do something worthwhile, maybe. 

He doesn’t want to die. Or, even worse, he doesn’t want to watch any of the others standing in the circle die. He knows this could go wrong, even if there isn’t an evil scientist in the building. Empty buildings are empty for a good reason.

Jace looks up at the moon and thinks about his parents—his birth parents. He wonders if they were brave. If he has some genetic bravery somewhere in his code that’ll kick in any minute. 

“Everyone turn on your phone flashlight.”

When there are seven beams of white light, Jace is satisfied to stop being the leader. This job is meant for Alec or Clary, maybe Maia but he doesn’t know her well enough yet to tell. 

It feels natural when Clary takes her place at the front. She leads them right up to the glossy double doors and yanks unsuccessfully. This turns out not to be a problem at all, because Maia is apparently willing to toss a fist-sized rock through a glass door. 

“Feel like we could be friends.” Isabelle mutters to Maia as Clary is already unlocking the door with her arm just barely avoiding a jagged stalagmite of glass. Jace realizes with alarm that nothing will stop Clary now, meaning nothing can stop any of them. 

The door opens into a barren lobby. If this is an office building, it’s clearly lost whatever companies once occupied it. Jace briefly thinks of _The Office_ and the bright calmness of his world just a few hours ago, when he was watching it on his phone during advisory. 

“Elevator isn’t working.” Magnus observes, pressing repeatedly against the dark triangle button on the wall to emphasize his point. “This place is definitely abandoned.”

“Except for that.” Simon rasps, pointing at a spot over Jace’s shoulder. 

He whirls around to see a tattered white banner, hanging lamely above an empty information desk. **ENVINFINITY** it reads in an earthy, cheerful green. Below that and a logo of the Earth are the words, **NEVER BREAKING THE CYCLE, NEVER RUNNING OUT.**

“Okay.” Isabelle suddenly has an usual look on her face. The last time Jace remembers seeing this particular expression is when they were waiting in the house during a power outage, huddled together in the dark and vigilant to fight off any monsters that may have been lurking. They were twelve at the time. “This now feels like trespassing.”

“It _now_ feels like trespassing?” Magnus asks incredulously. “Not when we smashed the door and flipped the lock?”

“Clearly some kind of company or—organization worked here. Should we really be busting in?”

“One banner is what’s going to—“

“This way.” Clary cuts through the nervous back-and-forth between Isabelle and Alec. She’s already descending down a set of stairs, a good ten steps ahead of the closest of the group to her, which happens to be Simon.

So now the seven blips of light are illuminating cinder block walls that line a cement stairway. Jace is between Alec and Isabelle and, almost unthinkingly, he slips his hand into his sister’s. 

They reach a door at the bottom of the stairs and Jace is almost overcome with relief. There’s no glass to break on this one—it’s solid steel. They’ll have to turn around, go home, get food, and then hear a perfectly reasonable explanation from Luke this time tomorrow. 

“It’s unlocked.” Clary says triumphantly. She doesn’t seem to realize why this is not a victory worth celebrating, but before he can voice this concern she and the rest of the group are spilling into a wide open room, this one anything but barren. 

There are large cylinders lining each wall, some filled with kindling fire and some filled with what looks like nothing more than swirling water. There are pumps connecting each cylinder, creaking and moaning emanating from these tunnels. Down here, there are no happy banners with bright green letters. There are no office desks, no watercooler. 

This is wrong, Jace thinks. He’s begun to drift towards a cylinder that contains a fire which licks up the sides of the glass—not glass, though, right? Because wouldn’t it break? Jace isn’t great with science, but he remembers shattering a test tube over a bunsen burner and getting yelled at by Mrs. Watson. 

“Guys,” Simon suddenly breathes, head tilted back and a single finger reaching up to point at a spot perhaps thirty feet above their heads, “look.”

There are hulking metal shapes in the air. Things with legs and spindles, barrels and triggers. They’re held up tight with something clearly strong, some sort of metal wiring. Jace thinks about the camping tip to tie up your food in the trees so bears can’t break into your reserves. 

“That’s it!” Maia suddenly exclaims, pointing at one particular shape. “That’s the earthquake machine.”

“I don’t think—“ Simon begins to say, but then there’s a terrible slamming sound and a sharp cry of pain. And Simon’s on the ground now, each group member darting to reach him and forming a compact point rather than their expanding circle. 

There’s blood pooling slowly from the left side of his head, which rests on cold concrete. _He’ll be so cold,_ Jace thinks almost hysterically, _his jacket is so thin._

The next thing he notices is a large man looming over them, built with the proportions of an oversized Lego block. He stands over Simon with a crude wooden board in his hands. There’s blood on the board, Jace sees, Simon’s blood. 

Simon’s phone is face up on the concrete, inches from his limp hand. Now there are only six points of light. 

“Jesus Christ,” Magnus mutters as he slips a hand under Simon’s head and shakes gently, “can you hear me, kid?”

Simon remains unresponsive. The group seems to be splitting into those who remain crouched beside Simon (Magnus and Isabelle) and those who are forming a tight blockade between them and the man (Clary, Alec, and Maia). Jace elects to stay with Simon. Just to make things even. 

“A bunch of kids,” The man growls lowly, as if he’s just talking to himself, “a bunch of _kids._ Unbelievable.”

He swings his board again, but he’s disarmed when Maia immediately springs for his legs with startling reflex. Alec and Clary get the cue to help her, Alec landing a solid uppercut while Clary chooses to apply all her force to the arm that clutches the board. It’s a rather odd sight, especially from Jace’s angle on the ground, to see his brother, acquaintance, and—what does he even call Maia?—attacking a man twice the size of them combined. 

As the man stumbles, not quite overcome enough to fall but probably angry enough to do even more damage once he regains his balance, Isabelle quickly sticks out a leg and the goon comes crashing down. Before he can get up again, Alec pins one arm to the guy’s back, knee firmly planting itself on his lower back. 

Alec looks like a superhero, Jace thinks in awe. His _brother_. Pinning a man down on concrete. 

“Those yours?” Alec asks, grabbing a fistful of the main’s lanky dark hair and yanking until his eyes are forced upward, where the weaponry dangles. 

“They’re mine, actually.” A new voice makes Isabelle flinch beside Jace. He takes one hand from Simon’s shoulder and grabs Isabelle’s hand again. It’s dark in here, and she hates the dark, and he’s praying that this new voice will just announce that this is all an elaborate prank and they’ll all be able to go home. And Simon will be fine.

No such luck. 

The man who emerges into their view is the polar opposite of the grungy stranger being pinned below Alec’s knee. This guy is tall and slim, just enough bulk on his arms to prove the existence of muscle but not so much that the black sleeves of his suit bulge. His greying hair is slicked back into a sensible business-cut. Overall, he matches the appearance of the building from the outside. Sleek, smooth, just vaguely menacing in a way that can’t be identified at first. 

It’s his face that unsettles Jace the most. His nose is just slightly pointed, his brows permanently downward in a scorn. He looks at them all calmly, looks at Simon’s crumpled form with disinterest. 

Why is Jace more afraid of this man than the one who just knocked one of them unconscious?

“Boss—“ The man under Alec’s grip chokes out. “Get this brat off me.”

“Hiring good help has never been my strong suit.” The boss declares in a tone usually reserved for stand-up comedians. Jace half expects him to launch into a routine about relatable working conditions, and a crowd hidden in the shadows of this rumbling factory will laugh. “Case in point, I hired a security worker who can be taken down by a group of teenagers.”

“Who are you?” Clary demands, taking one step forward before Maia’s hand catches her wrist and pulls her back. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, exactly?” The boss asks casually as he reaches into his jacket, as if ready to produce a business card that says his name in elegant gold lettering and a title like **EVIL WEAPONS MANUFACTURER** beneath it. “Actually, don’t bother explaining what you think. It doesn’t much matter now, does it?”

What he actually produces is a gun. A small, black pistol. And he points it directly at Alec. 

Finally, Jace’s instincts decide that enough is enough. He lurches upward and shoves himself in the space between Alec and the gun, staring defiantly past the cold black eye of the barrel. He can hear the chorus of panic from his friends, a sob that sounds like Isabelle, and a few thuds as steps are taken toward him. 

“Jace—“ Clary gasps, sounding as if this has finally jolted her from her trance. 

“It’s fine, Clary.” He manages to sound steady. “Stay back. You too, Alec. Keep him down.”

But then the gun lowers. The barrel is no longer eye-level with Jace. Now he’s left with a full image of this man, this man who’s looking between him and Clary as if discovering something enormous. 

“Clary.” The man says her name softly, gently, sounding human for the first time. “Clary Fray?”

There’s a silence. All Jace can hear is the distant pulse of his hammering heart and fire crackling somewhere deeper in the warehouse. Then, 

“Who _are_ you?” Clary may think she’s kept her identity concealed by refusing to answer, but just like the unlocked door she’s missed a crucial point again. This question and the mystified tone of her voice confirms that she is Clary Fray. And that she’s terrified that this man, with his suit and gun and evil henchman, knows that. 

“Are you Valentine?” Maia asks suddenly. “Of the Valentine Account?”

“I prefer Valentine of Envinfinity, the company that stands on the threshold of a new world.” He suddenly puts the gun away entirely, and now he’s smiling. The smile makes Jace’s stomach churn. “You’re more than a group of bored teenagers trespassing for the thrill of it. You’re here because of Luke, are you not?”

More silence. Confirmation. 

“Yes, I know the police are searching for my machinery. And I know that Luke Garroway is now a cop himself, curiously enough. He use to disparage law enforcement, you know. I suppose that changed when he had a child. Reasonable enough.” Valentine’s eyes briefly flicker back to Jace, only for a moment. He looks puzzled. Uncertain. “And of course a child raised by Luke and Jocelyn must be brave enough to go looking for something like this, that makes sense.”

Seemingly resigned to the fact that this man knows her, Clary quietly asks, “How do you know my parents?”

“Back when you were a baby, I would have called them my closest friends, my family even.” Valentine smiles again, though now it’s tinged with an added dose of bitterness. “Now, I choose to call them my...former business partners.”

“Business—?” Clary sputters the word out, sounding helplessly lost. “I don’t—“

“Maybe ‘business’ is an undersell. We were in the business of saving the world, your parents and I. Look around you, children. Look in these cylinders and crates and tunnels. What do you see?”

Jace looks. The fire and water he noticed earlier are only the beginning, he realizes now that his guard is down just enough. There’s a glass object that contains dancing flashes of electricity, like the cheap lamp Alec got from the science museum gift shop at age thirteen. In one glass box, scraps of paper flutter and fly in a constant swirling vortex of wind. There’s one cylinder with vivid greens of nature filling it, so much moss climbing the sides that it makes the glass seem invisible and gives the illusion of all this plant life just floating, climbing upward in midair. One cylinder is being continually filled with water, which is somehow freezing the second it reaches a certain point within the glass.

“Resources.” Magnus finally says. His hand hasn’t moved from Simon’s shoulder. 

“Precisely!” Valentine points a finger at Magnus without looking at him. “We looked at the world around us and decided that we could do better. That if people needed water, crops, warmth, we could provide that for them. And how? Through synthetic multiplication. Taking one drop of water and producing a gallon.”

“How?” Alec sounds so skeptical that Jace has the urge to laugh. He resists, thinking of the way that gun had looked between his eyes. 

“Cutting edge technology, which is where your mother came in.” Valentine says with a nod toward Clary again. “You read in your science books about Einstein, Edison, Tesla. If Jocelyn had stayed the course, she’d be right beside those names in a few years.”

“Stay—stayed the course?” Clary nearly whispers. 

“When your parents and myself reached a disagreement on how to apply our discoveries, they quit. Entirely. I didn’t understand it, Clarissa, because you were only six months old at the time. I loved you like my own daughter, you know that? And I didn’t—still don’t understand how they could rob you of a future where no person goes thirsty, or lives in the dark, or freezes in their home.”

Clary has finally managed her way out of Maia’s grip. Now she stands beside Jace, and he can see that her expression is full of wonder and confusion. The sort of helpless confusion that Jace is familiar with—the realization that you don’t know that much at all about your life. About your parents. 

Valentine is looking at Clary with exactly what he described: a fatherly sort of love. A need to protect. He hesitantly lifts a hand, and Clary doesn’t dart away from his tentative touch on her pale cheek. 

That’s when a sudden slapping sound of skin against skin interrupts the moment. Alec grunts in the effort of keeping down the briefly forgotten bodyguard, who managed to imprint a bright red hand on Alec’s cheek. Maia rushes to help, adding her knee to the back of the struggling and cursing man.

At this, Clary backs away. Valentine’s hand rests in midair, his eyes darkening. 

“I know my parents.” She says carefully, once again looking as though she’s pulling herself from a dream. “They wouldn’t give up on something unless there was a reason. And—and if you want to help people with this invention then why are you making _weapons?_ And why are you working down here, like you’re hiding some big secret?”

“There’s so much I wish I could explain to you.” Valentine says now, suddenly desperate. His previously gentle, hesitant touch has become heavier and he puts the same hand as before now on Clary’s shoulder, squeezing. Squeezing hard. “I need you to trust me, Clarissa. Just because this is new, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“You knocked out my best friend.” She whispers with growing horror. “You had him hit with _plywood—“_

“Clarissa.” Valentine bites out. Furious now. “You aren’t listening.”

“You make weapons.” Clary says firmly. Sure of herself. “I don’t know who you are, but Luke knows. Mom knows. I don’t trust you and I won’t listen to whatever lies you’re trying to—“

Something changes in Valentine’s eyes just seconds before the fire ignites. Jace doesn’t understand where it came from or when it lit, but he now realizes that he’s engulfed. Fire is spreading between them, smoke separating them aside from their cries. He hears snippets, Alec crying out for his siblings, Maia cursing, Isabelle coughing. 

And then one face emerges from the smoke, one white and haunting image of Valentine with what seems to be—but can’t be—flames in his eyes. Jace turns to run and a hand grips his forearm, searing it. 

Jace screams. He can hear his friends screaming, his siblings, his brother and his sister, oh _God—_

“I will find out, Jace.” Valentine’s voice manages to rise above the screams. “And I will come back.”

There’s sudden popping noises, cacophonies of explosions. Exploding metal, glass, who knows what else. Jace is distantly aware of something metal and sharp flying through the air, slicing his cheek open. 

His foot hits something solid, someone’s leg? And down he goes. 

Jace can just make out the shapes of the weapons that hang above them from his spot on the ground, sprawled on his back. Smoke drifts over him like a blanket. And he’s hot. 

He’s _so_ hot.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s been kind of a weird day for Magnus. Starting with the whole earthquake in his bodega, and then meeting a group of strangers who quickly broke into a cop’s private office to find files about some shadowy evil figure, and then trespassing through an abandoned office building, and then meeting the shadowy evil figure face-to-face. 

Now, he wakes up in a room he’s never seen before. By the looks of the soft bluish light that filters in from a window overhead, it’s actually morning. So the weirdness of yesterday, technically, is behind him. Scary things don’t happen during the day, that’s a commonly known law of nature, and yet. Last night is burned into his mind. 

Magnus tries to sit up. He’s immediately arrested by a sharp pain in his side and his hand jolts up to feel for the source. Instead of feeling the expected blood or scar, Magnus’ fingers brush clumsily over a smooth, cushy material. Magnus raises his shirt fully to see a large bandage pressed cleanly on the curve of his waist. He also sees that there’s a faint spot of red beneath the pristine white, but his brain refuses to remind him how that happened. 

What’s the last thing he remembers? That creepy piece of shit grabbing Clary by the shoulder. After that...he’s got nothing.

Currently he’s situated on a comfortable armchair, his legs sprawled on an ottoman and covered in a well-worn quilt. Another, more focused, glance around the room reveals evidence of others previously sleeping there, including kicked back blankets on the bed, sheets on a flattened futon, and an identical quilt on an identical chair across the room. 

Then the fact that Magnus has no real clue where he is dawns on him. Memory loss paired with waking up in a strange room is never good, and he’s jolting from the chair while mentally berating himself for not acting sooner.

There’s suddenly a restless energy stirring inside him, starting in his stomach and reaching his chest. It’s the kind of fluttery sensation that grows the closer you get to the dropping point on a rollercoaster, but Magnus isn’t sure where his dropping point is. All he knows is that his body is telling him to get out, like right now, so he hastily grabs his backpack from where it lays on the ground and bolts. 

The great escape is cut short when he stumbles into a living room—the same living room from yesterday—full of his new friends. Well, maybe friends is too strong a word. Accomplices to trespassing is more accurate and more comfortable.

And _they_ certainly look comfortable. Magnus’ eyes seek out Alec first. He’s situated between his two siblings on the same couch Magnus had been on with Simon yesterday—years away, basically. 

“Hey.” Isabelle beams up at Magnus, looking remarkably younger with her face clean of make up. “You’re up! We were starting to worry.”

Magnus stares at her for a second. His brain isn’t doing a great job of processing things. All he can think about is the constant chant of _get out get out get out_ and Isabelle is starting to look concerned the longer he goes without responding. Finally, Magnus forces himself to eloquently form his jumble of thoughts into a cohesive question. 

“What the _fuck_ happened to us?”

Isabelle looks away. Her jaw tightens just enough for Magnus to guess why the atmosphere in the room seemed so eerily calm: they were all actively ignoring the traumatic event that happened only hours ago. And now Magnus has forced them to confront it. 

“How much do you remember?” Isabelle asks lightly. “Like I—I couldn’t really remember anything past that guy’s big speech.”

“Same.” Magnus tries desperately to remember what had happened after Valentine’s aura of calm had started to unravel, but nothing is clear. 

“Well Clary and Maia both kind of pieced together some kind of fire starting? I guess I do remember—“

“Smoke.” Magnus finishes. 

“Right. We must have passed out from fumes or something and Luke came looking for us before we could, you know…”

 _Burn to a crisp. Suffocate on smoke. Die._

“There’s still the question of what the hell that guy was talking about.” Alec interjects. “But um, Luke said he’ll explain everything once we’re all awake.”

“And _someone_ slept for an hour longer than the rest of us.” Jace mutters over a cup of orange juice. 

“You slept longer than Simon.” Maia chimes in from her seat on one of the green armchairs. She has a plate of food on her lap and she swallows a spoonful of scrambled eggs before adding, “And he was knocked unconscious.”

Remembering that, Magnus looks down at Simon, who’s laying in the same position that Magnus had woken up in, legs draped over an ottoman and head leaning against the arm of the chair. Magnus has to step back to get a good look at him. It’s good to see the kid conscious, to say the least. He’s now dressed in flannel pajama pants and a NASA tee, covered up haphazardly with a knit blanket. His glasses are missing, and without them he looks younger. 

“Three.” Simon says to Magnus, tone completely casual. 

“What?”

“Everyone’s been making me tell them how many fingers they’re holding up. Three is a pretty popular answer so I figured I’d just get it out of the way with you.” 

Despite having just met him less than twenty-four hours ago, Magnus is pretty certain that this is normal behavior for Simon. Things may still be terrifying and confusing but at least there’s no permanent brain damage involved. 

“I’m glad you aren’t concussed.” Magnus tells him, which is pretty high praise considering they’re relative strangers and Magnus doesn’t get attached easily. The generosity is returned in the form of an empty cup, which is shoved into his hand. 

“Can you express your relief that I’m alive by getting me some more water?”

“That’s like your eighth glass.” Jace says, drawing Magnus’ attention in his direction. Now that he’s really looking, Magnus notices that Jace looks alarmingly—hot. Not like Alec hot, but like actually, temperately hot. His face is flushed and coated with a layer of sweat despite the moderate temperature in the living room. The only interruption to the sheet of red covering his cheeks is a white bandage identical to the one plastered on Magnus’ own side. In direct juxtaposition, however, Alec is wrapped in a blanket and appears to be minutely shivering. 

“I’m _thirsty_.” Simon responds, shoving the cup at Magnus with even more force. 

“Wait, where’s Clary?” He asks, suddenly fearful now that the last bit of alertness finally sets in. “She’s okay? She’s here?”

“She’s fine.” Simon assures him. “She’s just taking a shower. And I _guess_ I’ll get my water myself—“

“Oh my God, just give it.” Magnus takes the glass and resorts to ignoring the string of inexplicable developments by hurrying to the kitchen. He still has that feeling of restlessness and he thinks it may be like a limb that’s fallen asleep. Maybe all he needs to do is move around a little and it’ll all clear up.

There’s a relative buffet situation going on in the kitchen. Several plates of pancakes are shoved onto the small island, one plate designated for plain and another for chocolate chip. On the stove there’s a pan of scrambled eggs beside a pan of bacon, mostly depleted, and Magnus has to pass a very inviting plate of hash browns on his way to fill Simon’s cup with water from the fridge. 

Magnus is accustomed to the concept of morning after breakfast. He’s seen enough romantic comedies to know that waking up to a mountain of pancakes isn’t entirely unusual, but he’s not really sure how it applies when it’s the morning after a traumatic and possibly near-death experience. 

Again, the urge to run nearly overwhelms him. His grip on the cup briefly falters and water sloshes over the brim and onto the tiled floor.

“Mom will freak out if she sees that.” Clary says, startling Magnus into spilling even more. He turns to see her entering in shorts and a tank, her wet hair pulled up into a high ponytail that stays stiff in place as she joins him in soaking up the spill with a fluffy blue washcloth. Magnus feels another countless spike of alarm since waking when he sees that her face is just as flushed as Jace’s, though he opts not to call attention to this. But then Clary takes the glass from him, her fingers inadvertently brushing against Magnus’ skin, and he can’t ignore _that._

“Jesus.” He grabs at her hand and feels rightfully horrified at her body temperature, which he imagines is equivalent to the heat emanating from the stove. “Are you and Jace _sick?_ Should we be calling 911?”

“I feel fine.” Clary says with a breathy laugh, waving away the alarm in his voice. “That craziest thing is that I just took a shower on like the coldest setting. I think it worked for a minute but now it’s—it’s coming back.”

“Yeah, that isn’t normal. None of this is normal.”

“You think that’s freaky, you should feel Alec’s skin. Fucking ice cold, like he’s _dead_ or something. And every time Izzy touches someone she shocks them and Maia can’t relax unless she’s like, sitting in direct sunlight which, why?” She looks up at him with what he realizes is pure, unbridled fear. Something that had been missing last night. “What’s your thing?”

“Um.” Magnus feels like maybe he shouldn’t mention it, because she really seems stressed enough as it is. But then again, she’s the only one who seems to grasp how unnatural the situation is. “I feel this weird—energy? Like I can’t stay still. That’s not that bad, though, I mean my body temperature is totally normal so that’s good.”

It doesn’t seem good to Clary, who just purses her lips and throws the rag aside with startling force. “Come on. Now that you’re up, they can’t dodge the questions anymore.”

“Yeah uh, I just have to get Simon’s water first.”

 _“More_ water? You know he drinks soda exclusively. This is the most hydrated he’s been in probably like, years.” She shakes her head as if this is somehow the most baffling of it all. Maybe it is, because Simon is more to her than just a stranger. Maybe Simon’s sudden shift is more real to her than the weird restlessness and subzero temperature of strangers and it isn’t something she can dismiss. Not that it seems like she’s dismissing anything, which Magnus admires. 

Clary _handles_ things. When she has questions she gets her answers, even if she knows she may not like them. 

Magnus isn’t the same way. He sits on the ottoman that Simon had previously been stretched out on, waiting for Luke to come and explain what his own memory can’t. No one speaks, but there’s a sense of comfort that lays over them like a blanket. A sense of togetherness that helps for some reason, though they barely know each other. 

It’s not just Luke that sits down with them. Jocelyn introduces herself to them with the utmost warmth and politeness. Magnus can see a lot of Clary in her high cheekbones and fiery hair, but that does little to comfort him. The only concept of this woman that exists in Magnus’ mind is the one planted there by Valentine, and though his common sense insists that the chances of her villainy being accurate are very low, he needs proof. 

He needs honesty. 

“I know you’re confused.” Luke begins gently, and Magnus very suddenly wants to cry. This is about to be real. “And we’ll explain everything but first we need you to tell us what happened. Tell us everything.”

“You aren’t in trouble.” Jocelyn adds hastily, giving Luke a pointed look until he nods in agreement. 

Clary does most of the talking. Occasionally she trails off, specifically in parts that highlight her own impulsivity, and during those bits the groups alternates between filling in details. Everyone except Simon, anyways. He looks comically awed by everything that happened after his take down. 

“He said that—“ Clary stops abruptly when they get to the part where Valentine disparages her parents. She looks helplessly at the rest of them and Jace takes this opportunity to finish for her. 

“He said that you all use to work together. And that you gave up on the company.” Jace levels a steady gaze at Luke and Jocelyn, not flinching away at the expressions on their faces. “He was being perfectly reasonable, actually.”

 _”Reasonable?”_ Maia echoes with an incredulous laugh. “Um, what about the part where he admitted to making the weapons that broke my arm and almost shot your brother in the face? Or when he had Simon knocked out?”

“I’m not saying that he’s a stand up guy, but his story made sense.” Jace responds steadily. “You abandoned your cause.”

“We didn’t abandon anything.” Jocelyn insists, suddenly looking more like Clary’s mother than ever. It’s the newfound fierceness behind her eyes, probably, that makes the resemblance so strong. It also makes Magnus minutely intimidated by her, a hard task to achieve. “Valentine was the one who lost sight of why we were experimenting. He started a family that he couldn’t afford to provide for and came to us hoping that we’d be willing to turn a profit. We refused.”

“I don’t know who I believe.” Clary declares. The look on Jocelyn’s face makes something ache in Magnus’ chest. “But right now I just want to know how _this_ happened.”

Magnus watches her tug down the left sleeve of her shirt until a large, angry mark on her shoulder is exposed. Isabelle and Simon both wince while Jocelyn jolts forward, full of motherly concern. Magnus leans forward to inspect the burn and he realizes with a sense of dread that the burn is the rough outline of a hand. 

A handprint right where Valentine had been grabbing her shoulder. Right when the fire started. 

“I know this sounds crazy. But I saw him _ignite._ One second he was normal and the next he was on fire. He _was_ the fire.” Clary looks at them all with a firm resolve. Magnus doesn’t need any further convincing. “I want to know how that happened. And I want to know why me and Jace are both burning and why Alec is freezing and why Simon’s like, constantly dehydrated.”

Luke and Jocelyn exchange careful glances with each other. Almost imperceptibly, Jocelyn gives Luke an affirmative nod and he sighs heavily before looking at them all one by one, face calm. 

“This won’t make sense.” He says gently. “Don’t be scared.”

Magnus, already very scared, watches Luke carefully clasp his hands together. He holds them out in front of him until they’re the centerpoint of the group’s circle. Then, slowly, he moves his hands apart until there’s a small gap between his palms. 

And from that gap, a gust of wind tears through the room.

Pictures shake on their frames. The wings of the ceiling fan begin their circular path. The curtains flutter. Magnus can feel strands of his own hair being pushed away from his eyes, making his view of the small tornado that’s swirling through the Fray’s living room unobstructed. 

And in his stomach, the fluttery feeling of energy is doubling, tripling. It’s overwhelming and Magnus is pretty sure he’s about to pass out, so he puts his hands out in front of him to catch himself when his body inevitably gives up. 

Instead of giving up, his body unleashes a sweeping wave of wind that adds to the twister. The energy is no longer trapped within him but is free and expanding and the wind is swirling faster, pushing Alec’s blanket off his shoulders and knocking a vase off the mantle. There’s wind _coming from his hands._ Produced from his own body but from where? And how? And how does he turn it _off?_

Luke abruptly stops his own gust and hurries across the small space of the room to Magnus. He grabs roughly at Magnus’ hands and shoves them together until his palms are pressed flat against each other. The room stills, the only sound being Magnus’ ragged breathing and Jace’s muttered string of expletives. 

Luke looks just as stunned as Magnus feels. He looks at him with wide, urgent eyes and grips his shoulder roughly. 

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t know!” Magnus gasps, suddenly feeling the insane urge to laugh. “I—I had this like, this—“

“Energy?” Luke fills in and Magnus nods desperately. 

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know—I—holy shit, how did—?”

The lights flicker overhead before Magnus can finish his incoherent train of thought. Luke whips around to look at Jocelyn, who’s staring at the flickering bulbs in the ceiling fan with an obvious sense of dread. 

“It’s not me.” Jocelyn whispers. 

“Yeah, um,” Isabelle says shakily, “I think it’s me.”

“What the fuck!” Jace exclaims amidst the collective noise of everyone’s whispered expletives and awed proclamations. Magnus thinks Simon may be praying. He feels like praying himself, though he’s never been religious. Maybe God could fill him in on how the fuck wind just came from his fucking hands.

“Okay, listen.” Luke puts a hand up to silence the noise. “This is what happened to us. A lot happened that Valentine didn’t seem to fill you in on, probably because he knew you wouldn’t believe him and he didn’t want to prove it.”

“Prove that you have superpowers?” Simon asks. There’s a prolonged silence during which Magnus observes a look of total defeat overtake the faces of two adults. 

“Pretty much.” Jocelyn concedes. 

Noise erupts again, this time loud enough to probably get complaints from the neighbors. Magnus isn’t yelling, though. He can’t seem to tear his gaze away from the picture on the wall of Jocelyn and Luke, arms intertwined. The frame is crooked now. He made it crooked without touching it. 

It takes a good five minutes for Luke to get everyone quiet. As soon as silence falls, someone starts again with a question or just a general acknowledgement that this is fucking weird. And when it’s finally, finally quiet, Jocelyn takes over. 

“Everything that you saw in the factory is the result of years of work. And science is never certain so...as soon as we got cocky, things stopped working. There was a night where we decided to force a month of work into five hours. We were impatient. And it was simple, really. Too much pressure in the chemical solvent made a vat burst and chemicals flooded our workspace.”

“We tried to escape.” Luke adds. “But the fumes made us lose consciousness. Just like you.”

“And when we woke up,” Jocelyn looks at Isabelle and holds out a hand. The overhead light stops flickering and goes out entirely, leaving them with only the faint beams of the morning sun. “We were different. We had powers.”

“So you’re telling me,” Simon speaks slowly and calmly with a small smile playing at his lips, “that we have superpowers?”

“Well Izzy and Magnus definitely fucking do.” Jace declares, suddenly laughing. The laughter is a little hysterical and it spreads quickly between them all, even cracking through Clary’s jaded expression. 

Maybe it’s the concept of having superpowers or maybe it’s the relief of being safe or maybe it’s the fear of knowing that now they _can’t_ be safe, not really, maybe it’s just that Magnus witnessed a tornado indoors just now or maybe it’s this tornado of emotions ripping through him. Whatever it is, Magnus can’t stop laughing. None of them can.

And when he wipes tears from his eyes and sees Luke and Jocelyn looking entirely bewildered, he starts all over again. 

 

Maia thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. 

She can’t exactly deny it. She just aced an AP bio exam yesterday and the first page of the textbook states the primary law of science, which she lives by: evidence proves a hypothesis. 

The hypothesis is that they all, through a cataclysmic explosion in a secret lab run by an evil weapons manufacturer, gained supernatural powers. And the evidence is Magnus ruining the hair of everyone in the room—except her’s, which stayed bound in her braids—and Isabelle making the light spasm in the bulbs. 

After the strange fit of laughing, which has yet to have a reasonable explanation, Luke had assured them that everything would be okay. And that helped a lot. Maia trusts Luke with her life and if Luke says things will be okay, they will. 

Luke and Jocelyn also did a nice demonstration of their powers. Five in total, three for Luke and two for Jocelyn. Everyone had gathered around on the floor to watch a small pool of water appear in Luke’s cupped palms. Then, he’d showed them how he could make the small succulent on the windowsill grow an inch, its rubbery arms expanding beneath his gentle touch. Maia, ridiculously, almost cried.

Then Jocelyn showed them the way the lights flickered when she flexed her hand and how she could touch the pool of water Luke let trickle onto the floor and instantly make it freeze over. 

“And Valentine had fire.” Clary had said quietly. She’d watched the entire thing with just as much awe as the rest of them, but unlike her friends Clary showed absolutely no excitement, no wonder, no...happiness. 

“Wind, water, ice, earth, fire, and electricity.” Alec had murmured, looking between them with shifting eyes. “That’s six. There’s seven of us.”

That’s when they’d finally broke formation. The shower was in constant use, the kitchen was occupied by Magnus who stress baked a plate of french toast in record time, and calls were made to parents. 

Maia called home and promised Mama she was fine, just staying with the Frays again. This is a fairly normal occurrence and Mama pretty much assumes by now that when Maia doesn’t show up in the evening, the Fray’s place is a good bet. It’s not that Mama is inattentive, God no, she’s just trusting. She trusts Maia to be good and stay out of trouble. 

“What would she say about this.” Maia murmurs now, looking out over the city. She’s perched on the fire escape, an usual place considering her prior fear of heights which doesn’t seem to matter anymore. She knows that the deep ache, the feeling of being bound by invisible chains, only recedes when she’s outside, which she also knows is probably indicative of her assigned power. 

_Earth._ The ability to make plants grow and plates to shift. Well, Luke had said, the whole earthquake thing was not the kind of feat you could achieve on level one of having superpowers. But maybe she can keep a successful garden now. 

Maia knows there’s more to it than that. It just helps for her to sort through her data in a more reasonable way, to take things one step at a time. Maybe the first hours of having superpowers isn’t the best time to dedicate herself to defeating evil. 

“Hey,” Simon pokes his head through the window and squints at her in the brightening sun, “you wanna see Alec freeze some orange juice into a popsicle?”

“That explains the shivering.” Maia checks that box off in her head. Cause and effect. “I’m good. I like it out here.”

“How does it feel to be the new Poison Ivy?” Simon asks as he fully climbs over the window ledge and onto the metal grating. He settles with his back to the protective bars and looks at Maia with a tired smile. From this angle she can see the white bandage that starts at the nape of his neck and stretches up into the curling tips of his hair. There’s another, smaller band-aid on the left side of his head, beside his eye. It’s a Spiderman band-aid.

Maia hasn’t always been the nicest to Simon. When she was younger and just starting to find solace in Luke, all Simon represented was a challenge. A competitor who was vying for the same trophy as her: Luke’s attention. And even as she grew, that impression stubbornly stayed. 

But watching the boy who she spent so many days of adolescence envying get knocked to the ground with a heavy wooden board put things into perspective. She may have wished for him to disappear in prior moments of immaturity, but watching that almost actually _happen_ had been terrifying. 

“It fits perfect. Always had a crush on Poison Ivy.” 

Simon laughs, looking inordinately pleased. Apparently he’s not holding on to any grudges. And thank God for that, because Maia once ate his leftovers from PF Chang’s in an act of revenge for him stealing Luke all night. She still has guilt dreams. 

“We all had a crush on Poison Ivy.” Simon agrees, absently reaching up to his neck and feeling at the bandage. 

“How’s your head?” She asks.

“Good!” He drops his hand immediately and smiles brightly. “It feels good. How’s your uh, wrist? I’ve never broken a bone so I’ve always wondered if it still hurts in the cast or if it stops like as soon as they put the cast on? That can’t be how it works. Also um, do you feel particularly...planty...yet?”

“Not yet.” Maia looks at the palms of her own hands, wondering what it’ll feel like when they decide to deliver nature. “What about you? You feeling watery?”

“Um, y’know I googled symptoms of head trauma and it said it can give you dry mouth.” Simon says this with great weight, as if it’s both true and extremely important. Maia thinks it’s neither of those things. At her silence, he continues. “So maybe I’m not water. Maybe I’m not anything, I’m the one who didn’t get anything because I was knocked out.”

Maia considers it for a brief second. It makes sense, maybe. But none of this makes sense and if Simon was exposed to whatever the rest of them were, he should logically experience the same results. Really if they were _all_ exposed, they should all experience the same results. What determines who gets what?

She thinks water makes sense for Simon. Steady, pure, necessary. She can’t think of anyone else it’d work better for.

Science doesn’t have anything to do with personality or traits or favorites. But also, this isn’t science. It’s magic—Maia doesn’t know anything about magic. 

“I think Clary and Jace are both fire.” Maia says with a shrug. “I don’t know about Jace, but Clary isn’t usually that sweaty.”

“You’ve clearly never had gym with her.”

“Just be patient.” She says, looking back out at the city. It’s cold outside, but she feels perfectly comfortable. “Luke said it might take awhile for things to...kick in. Like, maybe Magnus and Isabelle were just so surprised that their emotions kickstarted it. It takes a strong emotion.”

“That makes sense.” Simon looks up at her thoughtfully. “Alec froze his OJ when Magnus touched his arm.” 

Maia is a little caught off guard by this. She doesn’t know Alec Lightwood at all, though he seems alright, and she only knows Magnus as the employee at her favorite bodega. Even if she did know them well, she’s not entirely sure she’d pick up on the subtle nuances of their emotions and feelings. 

She’s not great at reading people. She likes to think that it’s because her brain is analytical rather than emotional, but in reality she knows it’s because she hasn’t had much experience with people. With friends. 

Part of that is because they constantly moved from town to town when she was younger. Mama would travel for work and she’d settle Maia into different schools, where Maia knew not to get too comfortable. She’d had plenty of temporary friends over those years, the kind of girls who would invite her to sit with them at lunch out of completely forced politeness, but no one real.

Brooklyn is permanent, at least until college. She’s had plenty of time to establish friends here, but by now she’s accustomed to operating alone. She use to watch Simon and Clary talk and laugh and occasionally gladiator wrestle with a longing ache, but a firm resolve. 

Clary and Simon are an anomaly. Usually, friends betray or leave or...move away. She doesn’t like risk factors. Besides, she has friends. She has Mama and Luke. 

Even if she’s not especially insightful, she can tell that Simon’s freezing in his pathetic excuse for a jacket. So she gets up. 

“Come on. Maybe we can watch the Lion King and you’ll cry like last time and that’ll trigger your power.” 

“Oh fuck, Luke said it wasn’t noticeable.”

They don’t watch the Lion King. Maia watches Isabelle make the kitchen light weakly flicker while she eats a bowl of cereal. There’s a small potted plant in the pane of the tiny window that casts light into the kitchen from above the sink. Maia considers taking it back outside with her, holding it and trying to grow it, but she dismisses that. She’s too tired to have an extreme emotional reaction or whatever. 

Apparently Simon isn’t.

He gets up after a half hour of stirring his spoon through his own bowl of cereal, not ever taking any bites, to answer his buzzing phone. He disappears for about two minutes and comes back noticeably dimmer, and with water dripping in clear blue pearls from his fingers. 

Maia and Isabelle both stare with hesitant excitement. Based on the concerns he’d voiced to her just an hour earlier, Maia had thought Simon would be much more ecstatic when his powers were finally confirmed. After all, Maia had once watched Simon cry literal tears of joy over an impressive Star Wars trailer.

Now he’s just avoiding eye contact and making his way back to his chair. He doesn’t touch his food. Just stares at his hands, which are now transferring droplets to the glossy wood of the table.

“Did you—?”

“Yeah.” Simon smiles weakly, not expanding any further. He simply dries his hands on a paper towel and nudges Isabelle. “You know what would be funny? If you turned the lights off on Jace while he’s showering.”

“Yeah we do that sometimes at home and he’s just accustomed to it by now.” Isabelle says with a shrug. “You know what though, can you control water _temperature?”_

“Uh, I dunno.” The gradual life that was seeping back into Simon’s features now begins to crest again, like a brief solar eclipse had passed. “The water was cold.”

Maia is debating asking Simon what the catalyst for his power was when Alec sticks his head into the kitchen, face set in a scowl. 

“Come watch this.”

They hurry into the living room, where everyone is gathered around the TV, Jace still wrapped in a towel and drying his mop of golden hair. Maia leans into the back of the couch and follows their collective intent stare. 

Pictured on the television in the HD that Luke insists on paying for, Gina Hernandez from the channel five news is solemnly reporting from outside a police precinct. 

Maia immediately looks to Luke, who catches her glance and shakes his head. “Not mine. Queens.” 

With the knowledge that everyone at the Brooklyn precinct is safe, including her fellow intern and kind of friend Bat, Maia returns her attention to the reporter. 

“Information is still coming in, but from what we can see here on the scene there are multiple first responder teams from other precincts on location. Again for viewers just tuning in, there has been an explosion at the 67th Queens Police Precinct. The source is still unknown, but the size of the explosion indicates a bombing—“

“It wasn’t a bombing” Jace says suddenly, sharply, and he stands from his seat and whirls to face them. He holds up an unsteady hand and there sits a small but steadily burning flame, originating in his unscorched palm and licking its way up to the ceiling. “It was _this.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SHOULD SAY BC I NEGLECTED TO IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS THAT THIS FIC WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT MY WONDERFUL FRIEND EM (@PINKLESBIANADE ON TUMBLR) WHO HELPS ME WITH PLOT, TYPOS, AND READS EVERY LITTLE EXCERPT I SEND HER THANK U EM I LOVE U
> 
> also. thanks for reading as always!! again if u wanna talk on tumblr i’m @richieapologist and i love hearing from u!! thanks again


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